We’ll Get Back to You

The phrase “We’ll get back to you” is commonly used as a brush-off to avoid answering an awkward question. Howard Broad may have been saying the same thing today, when he announced that he will have a senior police investigator “look into” the Don Brash email case. At this point that is simply not good enough and nothing less than a proper commission of inquiry will now resolve the issue of what can only be described as one of the police force’s least shining moments. Broad says that “continued questioning of the police role could undermine public trust and confidence in the force” which is quite laughable when you consider how long this matter has been going on for.

Several bloggers have wondered exactly why it seems okay to plaster Tony Veitch’s police file all over the media and yet hand over a heavily censored version of the Brash file? And why, asks Don Brash himself, is it acceptable to subpoena John Campbell to give evidence about the Medals theft but not Nicky Hager? No Right Turn says the two are different because the “balance the public interest in forcible disclosure against the public interest in both the communication of facts by the media and the ability of the media to access sources” isn’t clear in the case of Campbell but is clear in Hager’s case. I disagree. It seems clear to me that Campbell did not gain directly from his source’s illegal act and is “guilty” therefore only of protecting his source as he is supposed to. Hager on the other hand, benefits directly from the theft of the e-mails and their use in his book. This is not a journalist protecting his source, but an accomplice protecting his partner in crime. Keeping Stock also believes that there is a prima facie case against Hager.

This was not a trivial event, politically. It almost certainly cost National the 2005 election. It deserves more that a casual “we’ll get back to you” from Howard Broad. Nothing less than a full commission of inquiry will do.

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